I Liked White Better - or: Saruman and Social Darwinism - Part Two

Continued from I Liked White Better - Part One.

Saruman stands in stark opposition to the doctrines of Christianity. They teach that the weak and the poor are the ones that have the most to teach us—and, because of that, we should care deeply about how they are treated. God himself came to our world and was willing to be viewed as the bastard son of a poor carpenter from an underprivileged town which everyone (even inhabitants of the equally despised region of Galilee) shunned and avoided. He never attempted to get in the In Crowd; he never tried to look like one of the Wise.

Instead, he was firmly on the side of ordinary people, rather than those with Much. He was, theologically, a hobbit—one of the little people from a fly-over state. He was against the rich, but not just those Communists call bourgeoisie, the rich in material goods, but those prosperous in smarts or special talents. Not that possessing those things is bad (after all, he did give them to us), but not admitting that they are a gift is a great sin—akin to “blasphemy against the holy spirit.”

"Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

(Matthew 19:23-24 ESV)

I Liked White Better – or: Saruman and Social Darwinism - Part 1

“‘For I am Saruman, the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!’
“I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.
“ ‘I liked white better,’ I said.

“ ‘White!’ he sneered. ‘It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.’

“ ‘In which case it is no longer white,’ said I. ‘And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.’”
"Book 2, Chapter 2: The Council of Elrond" The Fellowship of the Ring

For many years, The Lord of the Rings has been my favorite book. Sir Peter Jackson’s film adaptation has, for nearly as long, been my movie of choice. In so many ways, the films perfectly capture the tone and story of the books, but, still, as requirements of the medium, a good chunk of the original had to be sacrificed.  Most of the changes are understandable. Tom Bombadil’s absence, for example, can obviously be attributed to the sheer difficulty of a faithful portrayal.

But there are things I miss, and chief among them (closely followed by a non-goofy Mouth of Sauron scene) is a brief snippet of conversation between Gandalf and Saruman deep in the stony bowels of Orthanc. It is in this scene that Saruman (pun intended) shows his true colors. Unlike in PJ’s adaptations, Saruman did not stay “the White” for long. Instead, he seeks to improve on the original design, making himself  “Saruman of Many Colours."

The Triumph of Despair

Suicide’s Note

The calm,

Cool face of the river,

Asked me for a kiss.

-Langston Hughes

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

-Edwin Arlington Robinson

This morning, in my poetry textbook, I read Suicide’s Note, by Langston Hughes. Unlike the longer, more elaborate poetry that I had been reading, this struck me as being extremely informal and, well, slightly silly. But after a few seconds, I realized that this was much more subtle than that. The image, brief as it is, paints a very full picture – and that’s a difficult thing to do with as little space as was allowed. A still, glassy, black pool of water, beckoning, enfolding the poet in a cold and deadly embrace. He sinks into the water, only to realize that the siren’s call has become his death.

Contrast Suicide’s Note with the poem, Richard Cory. Immediately, one hears the difference in tone and meter, which add a very different feeling to the story. With Richard Cory, there is a pattern of four-line paragraphs, with the a-b-a-b rhyming scheme. The imagery is light-hearted, the character or Cory puts one in mind of a Lord Peter Wimsey figure, immaculately mannered, charming—the social ideal. Cory is idolized by the poet(s); he couldn’t possibly make a faux pas, perfect wife, perfect family, butter wouldn’t melt – etc. Wouldn’t you want to be Richard Cory?

You know the type.

He has everything you’d ever want – charisma, wealth, manners, popularity. He’s that CEO who everybody likes, despite. People scrimp and save, longing to be their idol.

“And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.”

 

And that is what makes the poem’s end so effective: idols are always flawed. No man is perfect, appearances are deceiving. The poet is brilliant to keep the tone light-hearted and jaunty…right up until the fatal moment. That’s what suicide is like in real life – not melodramatic and mythic like Suicide’s Note, but quick, brutal and catastrophic. It is the triumph of despair and loneliness.

This is why so many people are devastated with the fall of pastors, actors, philanthropists and other “good” public figures, who had gained their trust. As Ravi Zacharias says, why should we be surprised when those we consider “holy” fall? Being a pastor does not change the desperate depravity of the human heart. Everyone, even and especially they, are subject to temptations and despair.

The current tagline of my novel, Raven’s Death, sums it up: “Judge not by sight. Secrets remain hidden because they are not clearly seen.” Well, it needs some work, but it’s supposed to be a maxim in my fantasy land, Mordreal, and I was trying to make it sound…proverby.

But here's the flipside: martyrdom. Suicide is much different than martyrdom. Many people have asked Christians why we condemn one and glorify the other. That is because there is a fundamental difference in the motives. Hear it from he who always says it best:

About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe.

-G.K. Chesterton

Suicide is the triumph of despair, abandoning and not "so loving" the world. Tolkien demonstrates this in many ways in The Lord of the Rings:

“Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death,” answered Gandalf. “And only the heathen kings, under the domination of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death . . . Come! We are needed. There is much that you can do.”

-Return of the King

I just discovered an article that follows the Chesterton-Tolkien connection even further; it's great. Check it out here.

There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo,
Longish
Neo-Mayberry, Middle of Nowhere, America

The Road Goes Even On and On (and on...)

Well, the news has broken. Like an expensive vase. The rumors (which I steadfastedly refused to believe) have been confirmed. Sir Peter Jackson announced on Facebook this morning that there would be a third Hobbit movie.

WHAT?

I'm not quite sure what I thinks, precious. When I first heard the rumors, I dismissed them, and even when I tried to take it seriously, it was all a little unbelievable. Two Hobbit movies was stretching the material pretty thin, but three? Even Peter Jackson couldn't push that far. Well, I guess he can. He has said that a lot of information from the RotK's appendices will be used, which is encouraging. But still, when I first heard the news, I, even I, the die-hard fan, was anxious.

I've realized that ultimately, it gets down to this: How much do we trust Peter Jackson?

I was too young to be involved in the excitement preceding LotR's release, but I do know that no one (outside a few insiders) expected much - nothing like what we got. Some no-name director from New Zealand blew the world away and swept the Academy Awards. Peter Jackson took the UK's favorite trilogy (that no one ever thought would be done justice in the cinema) and performed a miracle. I'm convinced that no one else could have created such a masterpiece with such a difficult book. There must be something about Peter Jackson that inspires people to do their absolute best, because the performance from ever sector was phenomenal. Or maybe he just used magic.

That's it!

The man is a wizard. Of course he make another Hobbit film and do Tolkien justice. One of the comments on this post (which says basically what I just said, only better) on The Rabbit Room says it best (and the commenter may or may not be my dad):

"Tom Bombadil: Hey dol! Merry dol! Why be ye troubled me hearties! Ol’ Pete’s behind the camera with a steady hand and eye. I’ve been a-running through the meadows and know the River Daughter. Trusty Pete! Rusty Pete! Have no more of dragons and dark lords! To New Zealand I will go!
And 3D is waiting….."

PJ all the way,

[7/25/2014 - in retrospect, this is a very sad post.]

Longish
Neo-Mayberry, Middle of Nowhere, America

In Defense of Tom Bombadil

Source

"Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;

Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.

None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master:

His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster."

The Fellowship of the Ring "Chapter 8: Fog on the Barrow-Downs."

Tom Bombadil is a mystery. Whenever I come to his brief cameo in The Lord of the Rings, I leave him feeling somewhat confused and definitely amused. Most of the time, I’m content to let him fall into the Tolkien’s Loose Ends category, along with the entwives and the secret of hobbits' origin, which, if we’re honest, is probably exactly where they belong.

 Just a cursory search on Google is enough to show that many people have devoted considerable time to cracking the Bombadil code. I don’t pretend to be one of them. I’m not really a Tolkien scholar; I’ve never even read Unfinished Tales (though I really want to), and I only read The Silmarillion once a few years ago. I try my best not to be drawn into stories to the extent that I start quoting and cross-examining them like the Bible (see the Baker Street Irregulars), all the same, it’s always fun to speculate about these things.